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Geology News
Earth’s Interior Current Events

Erik Klemetti, author of the Eruptions Blog, does not like the earthquake and volcanic eruption predictions that he has been seeing on the internet and explains why.

Today’s magnitude 8.6 and magnitude 8.2 earthquakes off the western coast of northern Sumatra produced small tsunamis that tested warning systems developed since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

“By analyzing submarine volcanic glass from the Manus Basin, scientists found unexpected changes in hydrogen and boron isotopes from the deep mantle.”

Could a partnership between a commercial telecommunications company planning an undersea cable across the Pacific Ocean and science researchers seeing ocean bottom monitoring be a great opportunity for both?

“Unexpected new findings by a University of Maryland team of geochemists show that some portions of the Earth’s mantle (the rocky layer between Earth’s metallic core and crust) formed when the planet was much smaller than it is now.” Quoted from the University of Maryland press release.

“Yulee, Florida. Not a place one usually thinks of as an Earthquake Epicenter. But this swampland not far from the Georgia state line is now home to a state-of-the-art seismic station known as 457A.” Quoted from the NSF press release.

IODP/USIO, Jennifer Magnusson

“Of all the habitable parts of our planet, one ecosystem still remains largely unexplored and unknown to science: the igneous ocean crust. While scientists have estimated that microbes living in deep ocean sediments may represent as much as one-third of Earth’s total biomass, the habitable portion of the rocky ocean crust may be 10 times as great.”

“While it has been known for many years that iron is the main element in the core, many questions have remained about just how iron behaves under the conditions found deep in the Earth. Now, a team led by mineral-physics researchers at Caltech has honed in on those behaviors by conducting extremely high-pressure experiments on the element.” Quote from the Caltech press release.

The crushing pressures and intense temperatures in Earth’s deep interior squeeze atoms and electrons so closely together that they interact very differently.

NASA has a new article that explains that over the past 20 million years magnetic reversals have occurred every 200,000 to 300,000 years but it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal.

Researchers at Michigan Tech, the University of Rochester and Yale University have determined that Earth’s core could be at least 1.2 billion years older than previously thought.

In this video, Dr. Bryan Tapp, a structural geologist at the University of Tulsa explains what he believes caused Saturday’s M5.6 earthquake in Oklahoma – it wasn’t hydraulic fracturing.

Princeton University researchers have produced a model of how seismic waves would spread across and within the Earth after the impact of a giant meteorite.

Related article: Impactites, the rocks produced by meteorite impacts.

Chris Rowan has an interesting post on his Highly Allochthonous blog titled: Does plate tectonics control magnetic reversals?.

NOAA has a webpage that links to a large number of maps, each showing the age of the ocean floor in a different format. A great resource for teaching, publishing and research.

“An international team of scientists has provided new insights into the processes behind the evolution of the planet by demonstrating how salty water and gases transfer from the atmosphere into the Earth’s interior.” Quoted form the University of Melborne news release.

“Ultra high precision analyses of some of the oldest rock samples on Earth by researchers at the University of Bristol provides clear evidence that the planet’s accessible reserves of precious metals are the result of a bombardment of meteorites more than 200 million years after the Earth was formed.” Quoted from the University of Bristol news release.

An article on the ABC News website explores the topic of earthquake prediction. Most earthquake researchers remain doubtful that accurate predictions will be possible.

The American Chemical Society has an article about the Deep Carbon Observatory, a research effort to study Earth’s deep carbon cycle, and how DCO research can apply to energy, manufacturing, biology and even astronomy.

You can watch an animation of the seismic waves crossing the USArray seismic network in this video on the IRIS website.

“Like scars that remain on the skin long after a wound has healed, earthquake fault lines can be traced on Earth’s surface long after their initial rupture. Typically, this line of intersection is more complicated at the surface than at depth. But a new study of the April 4, 2010, El Mayor–Cucapah earthquake in Baja California, Mexico, reveals a reversal of this trend. Superficially, the fault involved in the magnitude 7.2 earthquake appeared to be straight, but at depth, it’s warped and complicated.” Quoted from the NASA press release.

“New research from Matthew Jackson and Richard Carlson proposes that the remnants (flood basalts) of six of the largest volcanic events of the past 250 million years contain traces of the ancient Earth’s primitive mantle—which existed before the largely differentiated mantle of today—offering clues to the geochemical history of the planet.” Quoted from the Carnegie Institution for Science news release.

“Researchers analyzed data from the literature of over 4,000 of these mineral inclusions to find that continents started the cycle of breaking apart, drifting, and colliding about 3 billion years ago.” Quoted from the Carnegie Institution for Science press release.

“Geologists have used temperature measurements from more than 20,000 boreholes around the world to estimate that some 44 terawatts (44 trillion watts) of heat continually flow from Earth’s interior into space. Where does it come from?” Quoted from the Lawrence Berkeley National laboratory news release.

“Scientists and drillers recovered a remarkable suite of heat-tempered basalts that provide a detailed picture of the rarely seen boundary between magma and seawater. These samples were collected during a return to ODP Hole 1256D, one of the deepest “hard rock” penetration sites of scientific ocean drilling.” Quoted from the IODP press release.

“Geoscientists from five American and Canadian universities are installing a series of seismograph stations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ontario as a part of the SPREE (Superior Province Rifting EarthScope Experiment) Project. [...] The goal of the project is to study a geologic feature called the Midcontinent Rift; a seismic event that threatened to break apart North America approximately a billion years ago.” Quoted from the Algoma University press release.

A new species of roundworm, Halicephalobus mephisto, has been discovered living in the high-temperature pore water of a South African gold mine at a depth of over 1 kilometer. These are the deepest-living multicellular organisms ever discovered.

“The Salton Seismic Imaging Project, will create images of underground stucture and sediments in the Imperial and Coachella Valleys and adjacent mountain ranges to investigate the earthquake hazards they pose to cities in this area. Importantly, the images will determine the underground geometry of the San Andreas Fault, how deep the sediments are, and how fast earthquake energy can travel through the sediments. All of these factors determine how hard the earth will shake during a major earthquake.” Quoted from the USGS Fact Sheet.

“An international team of scientists report on the first observatory experiment to study the dynamic microbial life of an ever-changing environment inside Earth’s crust.” Quoted from the University of Miami press release.

Researchers at Caltech’s Seismological Laboratory “are using data from GPS satellite systems in an entirely new way: to measure the solid earth’s response to the movements of ocean tides—which place a large stress on Earth’s surface—and to estimate separately the effects of Earth’s density and the properties controlling response when a force is applied to it (known as elastic moduli).”

“Riddles locked deep within the Antarctic ice and underlying continent may hold answers to some of the planet’s most enigmatic questions. New Mexico Tech scientists are among a small army of researchers seeking to unlock the geological and climate workings of Planet Earth from the frozen continent.” Quoted from the New Mexico Tech press release.

“The idea that Tibet is more or less floating on a layer of partially molten crust is accepted in the research community. Our research proposes the opposite view: that there is actually a really strong lower crust that originates in India…”

“By using measurements of Earth’s movement taken from high-precision, continuously recording permanent GPS receivers installed across the western United States by the Plate Boundary Observatory, the researchers were able to observe tide-induced displacements—or movements of Earth’s surface—of as little as one millimeter.” Quoted from the Caltech press release.

“Geologists and geochemists believe that nearly all of the hydrocarbons in commercially produced crude oil and natural gas are formed by the decomposition of the remains of living organisms [...] but hydrocarbons of purely chemical – deep crustal or mantle origin – could occur in some geologic settings, such as rifts or subduction zones.” Quoted from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory press release.

ESA Image

“After just two years in orbit, ESA’s GOCE satellite has gathered enough data to map Earth’s gravity with unrivalled precision. Scientists now have access to the most accurate model of the ‘geoid’ ever produced to further our understanding of how Earth works.” Quoted from the European Space Agency press release.

“Deep under the Pacific Ocean, 500 miles off the coast of Costa Rica, they’re drilling – drilling deep down through the Earth’s crust into hard, crystalline rocks, layers upon layers of solidified magma. They’re headed for the Earth’s mantle.” Quote from the NPR podcast.

Mapping the Earth’s magnetic field – to find oil, track storms or probe the planet’s interior – typically requires expensive satellites. University of California, Berkeley, physicists have now come up with a much cheaper way to measure the Earth’s magnetic field using only a ground-based laser.

“Nearly half a mile of rock retrieved from beneath the seafloor is yielding new clues about how underwater volcanoes are created and whether the hotspots that led to their formation have moved over time.” Quoted from the National Science Foundation press release.

The magnetic North Pole is moving at a speed of about 40 miles per year as changes occur in the core of the Earth. In response to the movement, navigation systems that rely on magnetic north must be adjusted. The Tampa, Florida airport is repainting runway designators and changing signs to accommodate the change.